board8fandomcom-20200216-history
(1)Kirby vs (8)Cecil Harvey 2005
Results Sunday, July 31st, 2005 Ulti's Analysis Let me point you all to a poll before discussing this match: http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=1326 That's the Kirby/Ramza match from 2003, in which Ramza managed to score 42.34% on everyone's favorite pink ball. Now fast forward to 2005, two years after that match took place. Cecil was one of many lesser-known Square characters to make the bracket thanks to CJayC getting rid of the company cap, and even though most people figured Kirby had the match in hand with ease, a lot of people figured that Cecil wouldn't be that much weaker than Ramza. After all, Ramza was a lesser-known lead character from a cult Square hit, Final Fantasy Tactics. And then people started to mention that Nintendo seemed to be on the rise in this contest, and that Cecil may do a bit worse than the ~35-40% that people projected for him. But even then, still not too bad a performance. Then that god-awful Amano Cecil was posted, and people virtually gave up all hope of Cecil having any form of a moral victory in the match. But even then, not a damn person here had any clue what was about to happen to Cecil in this match. The average Oracle prediction for this match was Kirby with 63.66%. That's it. And on a related note, special props to King Morgoth for creating this page (http://oraclechallenge.com/consensus.php) solely due to me noting that average picks were no where on the Oracle site. That's some hardcore dedication, and I... owe him one, to say the least. Anyway, even with Cecil getting one of the worst pics we'll ever see in one of these things, people still figured that it wouldn't cost him too much. After all, Square characters don't get killed. Ever. Except in SFF matches. But when Kirby began this match by beating the absolute living crap out of Cecil, everyone quickly took notice that Kirby was perhaps a force. You don't just come close to breaking 75% on a Final Fantasy lead by accident, and Cecil did nothing in this match to prove that he did anything but bomb. Kirby just totally annihilated him. This match was the first match in which people started to proclaim en masse that perhaps Nintendo received a boost across the board (which creativename would later dub The Boost™), because again, scoring nearly 75% on a Final Fantasy lead on GameFAQs is no joke. Final Fantasy 4 may not be the most popular game out there, but it's still a fairly well-known FF title. It's not like Kirby beat the hell out of Fighter or Bartz. However even then, a lot of people assumed that Kirby overperformed due to an unfair match pic and the recent release of Canvas Curse for the DS. This may be a fair assumption, but it's ironic given that a lot of people figured Kirby to be the most undeserving of the eight 1 seeds in the contest. On the other side of this match, Cecil's getting killed spelled doom for Terra. The Terra > Dante upset pick HAD a halfway decent case until Cecil went out, got killed, and made Dante > Terra unbelievably obvious. Even if you wanted to bother thinking that Terra still had a prayer, Dante and Kirby have traditionally been more or less even in the stats in practically every contest. Assuming that they were still even, Terra would have to be able to do over 25% better than Cecil did, despite being in an ensemble cast. ....yeah, that one had a shot of happening. This match was a true shame given how awesome Terra and Cecil are as characters, but you get the feeling that they predate a good deal of GameFAQs users after you watch one of them get their face kicked in in underperforming by well over 10%. On an unrelated side note, Final Fantasy 4 is still a masterpiece. Just had to get that one in there somewhere. <3 Match Trends External Links * Match Updates * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category: 2005 Summer Contest Matches